


I came in on bended knee

by beverytender



Series: Arya x Gendry Week 2018 [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, AryaxGendry Week, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-23
Updated: 2018-07-23
Packaged: 2019-06-15 06:46:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15407313
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beverytender/pseuds/beverytender
Summary: She could hardly be blamed for not noticing it, she decides.





	I came in on bended knee

**Author's Note:**

> Day Two - Caught Red-Handed.

She doesn’t believe it, when Sansa first tells her. Dismisses it out of hand, completely, and in fact, Arya would not have given the - theory - a second thought, she tells herself, except that Sansa will not let it rest.

She’ll concede this - although not out loud to her sister, of course - it’s an improvement over the arguments they had as children. There is even, somehow, something bizarrely comforting in it. She thinks Sansa knows that, even if she does not tell her.

The first time she brings it up she tells Sansa that she’s being ridiculous and gives no further comment.

The second time she gives no answer at all.

The third she gives up on avoiding the conversation. She doesn’t know when or how it happened, but she thinks she is decidedly not the most stubborn Stark anymore. At least there is no one left in the training yard to hear Sansa say, bizarrely pleased, “He was watching you again.”

“Oh, honestly. Have you nothing better to do?” She should sound more irritated, she thinks to herself, if she wants Sansa to actually believe it’s irrelevant, silly, completely uninteresting. 

“Nope.” Sansa replies, lightly. “Not a thing.” Perhaps that’s why it’s comforting - it’s true, there is not much to worry about, currently. The maesters say spring is coming, there’s no marching dead, or any other immediate known threat, they’ve food enough to be content, given it’s the end of a particularly trying winter. Still. She doesn’t need whatever - whatever Sansa thinks this is.

“Well, find something, because this is not a thing. No need to be concerned.”

“Oh, I’m not concerned.”

Arya stares at her sister for a long moment, eventually finds that to be true. Not that she cares. “Well, fine. No need to be - I don’t know. No need to think whatever you’re thinking.”

“I disagree.”

“Clearly.”

“He didn’t take his eyes off you once, the entire time.”

“It was a demonstration! That hardly means anything. Water dancing is a different form of - “

“It wasn’t that form he was watching.”

“What - Sansa. That’s - ” 

“I can see why you enjoy scandalising people so much now.”

Arya rolled her eyes, still a bit unsettled by that comment. That wasn’t even - she doesn’t have the words for what that wasn’t even. “Good for you. This is still ridiculous.”

“That’d be easier, wouldn’t it? I don’t blame you. I don’t know that I would know what to do with it either, after the past few years.” 

“Maybe he does watch me,” Arya allowed, after a moment of watching her sister, more because that seemed like what Sansa wanted to hear than because she believed it, and because she knew it wasn’t easy for Sansa to say that, not any more than it was easy for her to hear it. If it gave her some… brightness to think that Gendry - 

No, it really was ridiculous, she couldn’t even think it. “That doesn’t mean anything. That was what we did for years - watched each others’ backs. It’s a hard habit to break, and this peace is new. I doubt anyone trusts it to hold yet, let alone -”

She herself certainly doesn’t, she has to admit. Not because she thinks it’s like to break, exactly, not any time soon, but because it seems - as hard to believe as war must have been to her, once, she imagines. And though she wouldn’t tell Sansa, wouldn’t tell anyone, for fear of hastening the break, it is a comfort, that he doesn’t either. And she knows he doesn’t, because even if she doesn’t believe he watches her when she isn’t looking, she knows he does when she is, and she can see it in the back of his eyes. She was well aware her family, Sansa perhaps most of all, wasn’t certain of it yet either, and sure, Sansa and her undeniable skill at the ‘game’ provided comfort as well, but, if she was honest, that had nothing on the certainty that came from him at her back. It wasn’t a thing she could explain, or felt the desire to try to. It just was. 

~

It’s a week before she is forced to think about it again.

Well. A week before she is forced to acknowledge to Sansa’s face that she’s thinking about it.

She knows the game Sansa is playing here at least. And she knows, keenly, that she has lost, lost badly and quickly, when she is shouting before Sansa has even finished her sentence about making certain introductions.

Sansa at least looks contrite a moment before she looks pleased.

~

He’s the last person she should go to see after that. 

Well. No. That isn’t strictly true. She feels no real free of accidentally spilling every thought she’s pretending very hard she isn’t having to Sansa, but Jon… She might.

And Bran…

But he’s third, not that it makes any difference, apparently, to her feet. She feels like a child again, sulky and out of sorts, and maybe if she turns it on him, she’ll irritate him thoroughly enough that whatever Sansa sees won’t be there next time.

Whatever Sansa thinks she sees.

Gods.

It doesn’t work for even a second, and she is decidedly not relieved. He looks so damned pleased to see her, damn him, and she can’t take it that Sansa’s right, not anymore than she could take it if Sansa were wrong, because what in the seven hells is she supposed to do with any of this? How is she supposed to - 

So she just glares at him and leaves again, puts herself to bed before supper like her mother used to, because she can’t take seeing anyone else today. Not anyone.

~ 

She doesn’t feel better by supper. She feels worse, actually, because she can’t keep hiding and then when she does go into the hall, he isn’t even there anyway, and she knows she must have convinced him she really was angry, because he hasn’t missed a meal since the war ended. The worst part is she feels worse about the lack of his eyes on her than that he thinks she’s angry with him, and she shouldn’t even notice that.

She can’t stand it, and she finds herself at the forge before her mind even begins to catch up with her - not quickly enough. “Why do you only smile at me?”

“Do I only smile at you?”

It is unfair, she thinks, that this only seems to ruffle him for a moment before he’s replied, while she’s stuck feeling like she’s not on solid ground anymore.

“That’s what Sansa says,” she informs him. That’s the least of it, honestly, but - gods, she is not telling him the rest.

That seems to shake him, but she can’t even find that gratifying, because she knows why there’s the sudden shadow of fear in his eyes, and it’s not…

And he hasn’t even answered her question, which is just plain rude. “Why?”

He only looks at her, still, and she is struck by the note of pleading in her voice when she repeats it again. When has she ever sounded like this? (You have, her mind fills in, traitorous, you know when, and she cannot stand it, that wasn’t - that couldn’t have been the same, but her argument falls flat in her own mind, and she cannot move.)

“Is there someone else I ought to smile at?”

Gods she wants to stab him. “Answer the question.”

 

His smile is not so pleased, and there is still the shadow of fear in his eyes, why is she still staring him in the eye, but it is not the same, not at all. “Reckon you know the answer already, m’lady.”

“Don’t -” she cannot finish the reprimand, instinctive as it is, her throat too dry, and then he turns away from her - makes it look easy, and that’s so much worse. Her feet, still traitors as well as her mind, her eyes, her stomach, propel her forward, closer. “Why are you scared?”

It’s not the question she wants to ask. How could she ever form those words? But she finds it easy to believe he thinks them, all the time, now. How he does is just as mystifying as everything seems to be, right this minute.

He does not answer, again, but somehow it is not irritating now. All of that feeling is leaking away. 

“Me too,” she says, unintentional but honest, so honest, and he stiffens, the offence clear in his voice when he does answer and it makes her smile, familiar.

“I wouldn’t hurt you.” 

“I know that, stupid.” Better than she knows almost anything, really. That seems to help him, provide him the familiarity, the comfort she got from getting under his skin a moment ago, because he sounds more normal, although also very much not, when he speaks again.

“You’re calling me stupid, but you’re standing there asking me why I only smile at you.”

Well. If they can still insult each other… maybe this isn’t the worst thing.

“Not because I don’t know.” How does that feel so true now, when only days ago it felt true that Sansa was making up the whole thing?

“I have tried to tell you.”

“Not well,” she snorts, but in hindsight she knows, can list, the moments he means, so she adds, “I guess we’re as bad as each other.”

He relaxes entirely at that, turns to look at her again, and the shadow is gone from him, gone from her, too, now she thinks about it, although she doesn’t know how, she still feels like they’re speaking some other language, one she had never actually learned. And yet.

And yet.

“Are you going to hit me for this?” He says, conversationally, almost smiling, and she knows he asks only to give her an out, the chance to bury this, because she is certainly not willing to bury him and he knows it.

And gods, the look in his eyes when she replies, “No, I don’t think so.”

“Is your sister?”

She laughs outright at that, and though still she isn’t deciding to move she’s not going to count as traitorous this time, she thinks, because perhaps whatever it is that drives her to press right into his space isn’t so bad. He doesn’t even leave her a second to feel awkward about putting her arms around her before he does the same and seven hells, she’s never been held like this in her life.

“Don’t worry,” she replies, after a few moments of giving in to the bizarre but not unwelcome, not at all unwelcome, urge to just press her face into her chest, “I do all her killing.”


End file.
